


A Different Kind of Fear

by Morpheus626



Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: Gen, Horror, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:08:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25060618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morpheus626/pseuds/Morpheus626
Summary: An odd sort of horror movie AU I've played around with in a few Sledgefu fics. This one features Pennywise, because why the hell not lol.
Relationships: Merriell "Snafu" Shelton/Eugene Sledge





	A Different Kind of Fear

“How the fuck is he out here?” Snafu hissed. 

“Same way he managed to be in New Orleans, but somehow in Mobile at the same time,” Eugene huffed, staring down the clown waving at them from across the airfield, using the arm of a dead soldier laying on the ground to wave. “Tormenting kids no matter they are.” 

“We aren’t kids anymore, so what the fuck does he want?” Snafu glared at the clown, a hand on his rifle. 

“Don’t think it has to be kids. Kids are just easier to scare. But y’know what’s out here right now?” 

“Whole buncha scared men, some of ‘em not even eighteen yet,” Snafu replied. “Shit.” 

“Yeah,” Eugene sighed. “The hell do we do if he comes closer? We can’t start spoutin’ off about seeing a fucking clown in the middle of-” 

“You guys see him too?” Ack Ack popped up behind them, seemingly from out of nowhere, and they both jumped. 

“Uh…yessir. We see the…clown,” Snafu replied. “How can you see him?” 

“How can I not? He used to follow me and my friends all over town. Calling to us from storm drains, showing up in our backyards just…watching us. Always turning into the worst thing you could imagine whenever he got close enough or got anyone cornered. Still think he took one of my friends. They said he ran away but…he wasn’t that sort. But he had that damn clown trying to chase him down almost every day towards the end. He wasn’t sleeping, wouldn’t sit still long enough to eat. Always felt like he had to keep moving to avoid it.” 

“Jesus,” Eugene breathed. “So…what did you and the rest of your friends do to get rid of him?” 

“We didn’t. I still get letters from some of the boys who couldn’t enlist for medical reasons, saying he’ll try and catch them after work if they’re alone, or show up in the basement of their home as their worst fear. Hell, thought I was losing it when I saw him a few days ago looking like…” Ack Ack looked to the ground and coughed. “I’d rather not say, honestly. It was gruesome.” 

“We got guns, enough men to take on an airfield full of Japanese. Why not just go after him before anyone higher up notices?” Snafu asked. “If we split up, and send 1/5 just over-” 

Ack Ack held up a hand to stop Snafu. “Not all the men can see him. At least, I’m fairly certain not all of them can. We’d be sending them after a ghost, as far as they’d be concerned. And that won’t do. Besides, I’ve shot at him in the past, and it didn’t do a damn thing. Didn’t even slow him down.” 

“He can’t be immortal,” Eugene said, ignoring the clown as it shape-shifted to a vision of Snafu, then Ack Ack, both with bloody bullet wounds in their foreheads. “Somethin’ can kill him. I just know it.”

“Most we can do is keep an eye on him,” Ack Ack said. “You both should rest; we push forward in the morning.” 

Snafu glanced over to the clown and shook his head. “Not sleepin’ so long as that asshole is starin’ at us. I don’t trust that he isn’t plannin’ to run over here as soon as we let our guard down.” 

Eugene nodded. They’d both been on guard, after discovering they were both being followed by the same monster, during an off-hand discussion in the foxhole that had led to a deeper talk about fear and the scariest thing they’d ever seen. And now that thing was watching them, his head cocked to one side, while he grinned maniacally. 

“You can’t not sleep. Or try to sleep, at least. I’ll keep watch for you, and both of you sleep,” Ack Ack admonished. 

“Sir, that isn’t fair to the other men, I mean-” Eugene started.

“I gave you an order,” Ack Ack interrupted, but smiled softly. “You both remind me of my friend right now, and I’m not letting that thing get anyone else on my watch.” 

They leaned against a wall of the abandoned and nearly destroyed airfield building the company was sheltered in for the night, Ack Ack in between them and 

It still wasn’t easy to sleep, with the sound of war ongoing and the threat of the Japanese possibly coming to try and take the airfield back somehow, but he managed. Snafu seemed to have done the same, his head on Ack Ack’s shoulder as he snored. Ack Ack was asleep too, and it hit Eugene like a brick to the face. 

Ack Ack was asleep. Snafu was asleep. He had been asleep. No one had kept watch for Japanese or that goddamned clown. 

In the corner of the room, the sound of shuffling loafers caught his ear. He turned to look, and there stood his father. 

“I don’t even recognize who you are anymore. Killing like that. How many more lives can you take before you’ll be an empty shell, as empty as the veterans from the Great War? And don’t think I’ll call you son after all that.” 

He knew it was the clown, knew it was fake, but fear and sadness and hurt seized his heart all the same, and he slapped at Ack Ack and Snafu until they woke up. 

“Jesus shit,” Snafu scrambled towards the blasted open section of the wall, pointing his rifle at the clown. “Sledgehammer, move to the side. I’m endin’ this.” 

Ack Ack’s hand was on the end of the rifle in a flash. “No, you won’t. It won’t work, and you’ll give away our position-” 

“I think the Japanese know we’re fuckin’ here,” Snafu snapped. “And this asshole-” 

To Eugene, it was just the clown now, but to Snafu it was clearly something else. His face was contorted with fear, a tear running down his cheek. 

“It isn’t real; don’t look at him,” Ack Ack said, turning Snafu’s face towards him even as the clown continued to approach them. “You’re sitting in the dirt in a godforsaken airfield in the Pacific, so whatever or whoever it looks like right now can’t be here.” 

Snafu snapped out of it, shaking his head and wiping away the tears. “Please let me shoot him. We have to do somethin’.” 

The clown opened its mouth to speak, but the shriek of a mortar interrupted it. 

They huddled against the wall, waiting for the ringing in their ears to abate before moving away from it. 

The clown was huddled with them, holding onto Snafu’s waist like it was the only thing tethering it to earth. 

“Um. Don’t,” Snafu grimaced and wiggled away from the clown’s hand. 

“What hell is this?” the clown asked, and they stared at it. 

“Sorry?” Ack Ack laughed. “Are you…you are, aren’t you? Scared shitless. What, the cursed pit you rolled out of doesn’t have war?” 

“Those things kill your kind,” the clown continued. “I can see it…blood and bone and gristle.” It stared at its hands and Eugene noticed they shook. 

“Yeah. That’s what bullets and mortars and flame-throwers tend to do to people,” he said. “Are you…gonna get around to tryin’ to kill us or…” 

The clown shook its head. “I should not have followed. This is…this is unholy.” 

“So are you, you nasty motherfucker,” Snafu said. “We gotta join up and head out with everyone else so-” 

“Do not leave me!” the clown was on its knees, scrabbling to tug at Snafu’s jacket. 

“For fuck’s sake,” Snafu groaned. “Stop touchin’ me!” 

“Can you not just…go?” Ack Ack asked. “I mean, back home you could go anywhere.” 

“Do you see any goddamned sewers here?!” the clown shrieked. “I followed that one on a boat.” 

Eugene glared as the clown pointed at him. “Well, I didn’t ask you to follow me! That’s your problem, and your fault!” 

The clown sobbed, and they exchanged looks. 

“Um. I guess you can stick around with us until someone gets their million dollar wound and gets to go home. I wouldn’t wish you on anyone, but you can follow them back to the States, but you can’t hurt a hair on anyone’s head, do you got me?” Ack Ack said, in the same tone he used for misbehaving soldiers. 

“I am not even hungry,” the clown whimpered. “Who could hunger during so much bloodshed?” 

The sound of Snafu working on a tin of K rations made the clown shriek again, and they laughed. 

“Snafu can,” Ack Ack snickered. “You want to be kept safe from anything that can kill you here? Then he’s gotta eat his rations, so he can be big and strong and scary against the Japanese waiting for us.” 

Snafu grinned, in a way that gave Eugene a shiver down his spine, but he smiled too as Snafu directed it towards the clown. “I think I want you to stay. I like you like this. Scared outta your wits, not even able to try and kill anyone. You oughta stay here. Maybe buried under a shit ton of coral, if we could ever dig any of it up.” 

“No, no, no,” the clown sat back and rocked back and forth, and they laughed again. 

“C’mon. We gotta move,” Ack Ack directed, and led them and the clown back towards the rest of the company. 

It was strange, at first, the clown walking behind him, clinging so close he swore that in another moment he’d end up carrying him piggyback through the trees. 

Ack Ack was up front, but Eugene could feel his eyes occasionally watching them, and the thing behind them. It was reassuring, even if the clown was basically harmless now, gagging every time they passed a corpse. 

“You eat people, you seriously gonna keep gagging like that?” Snafu asked as they dug in for the night, miles away. “I mean…really.” 

“This is different!” the clown spat, and Eugene rolled his eyes. 

“What? Cause it isn’t fresh meat?” 

“No. Different…fear. Different death. It would taste like poison,” the clown said coldly. “Wasted meat.”

“Oh, just wasted meat,” Snafu said. “Hear that, Sledgehammer? He’s just mad this ain’t the perfect buffet for him. Ass.” 

“That is not all that I meant,” the clown stuttered, but they both ignored it as it tried to keep talking. There was digging in to complete, cold K rations to heat up and eat, and then a little bit of sleep to try and get before the next battle operation. 

Snafu roused him from his sleep far sooner than he wanted, and pointed to the space that had become No Man’s Land. “Lookit this dumbass.” 

The clown was wandering No Man’s Land, weeping over the corpses there from previous battles. Before he could run, a Japanese mortar shot out and right through him. 

“Holy shit,” Eugene whispered. “Is that…I mean…” 

But the clown lived, not bleeding but instead running back to them with bits of its broken form turning into wisps and floating off into the night sky. 

“Look!” It shrieked, and Eugene was grateful no one else other than them and Ack Ack seemed to be able to hear it. “Look at what they’ve done to me!” 

“You went wanderin’ around like you were takin’ a walk around town. The hell did you think was gonna happen?” Snafu chuckled. “Shame it seems you can’t be killed. Japanese nearly solved our problem for us.” 

The clown scowled, and dropped into the foxhole, the hole in its torso slowly disappearing as parts of it reformed. “I hate it here.” 

They shared a joyful glance, and bit back laughter. 

“Welcome to the club. Everybody hates it here. Hell, even the asshole crabs and the Japanese probably hate it here now. This here is a wasteland of fear and death and disease, and nobody wants to be stuck in it, but we are,” Snafu said. “You better get mean and deal, or we’re just gonna leave you here.” 

“You can’t,” the clown begged. 

“We can. In fact, so far as I can tell and you’ve mentioned, this is the only place we could truly get away from you once we go back to the States,” Eugene said sharply. “So sit the fuck down, and stay down. Or you’ll starve here on this island.” 

What the clown didn’t know, was about the small slips of paper Ack Ack had passed them the last few times he’d been near them, once while marching and then again during dinner, detailing a plan. The plan was just that, to find a spot to trap the clown and leave it. They couldn’t let it make it back to the States, or anywhere else. The island was so ruined that even if folks did inhabit it later, they’d have already seen enough hell to likely not be afraid of it. It would be toothless, unable to survive, and would starve until it died-or did whatever it did when it couldn’t find people to scare and eat. 

A firefight broke out, and kept them busy for the next few hours, while the clown huddled and shook beside them, muttering about how badly it wanted to leave. 

When they were finally able to move out again, with the corpsmen treating their wounded, they had their chance. 

Before the clown could move, Snafu bashed it over the head with a particularly large bit of coral. They waited for it to move, to do something, as the bit of its skull that had been indented turned to wisps. But it stayed down, apparently dead or at the very least wounded heavily enough to be knocked out.

“Holy shit I think we got this. Move!” Eugene shouted, and they scrambled out of the foxhole, filling it back in as quickly as they could, tossing hunks of coral on top of it. It wasn’t a foolproof way to keep it down, but it was better than letting it continue to follow them. 

“The fuck is wrong with you two?” a Marine shouted from a few yards away. 

“Crab in the damn foxhole!” Snafu shouted back. “He’s dead now.” 

“He better be,” Eugene sighed as they fell in with the rest of the company, walking on towards their next assignment. He caught Ack Ack’s eye as they walked, and they shared a nod. It was over. It had to be. And it was over before it had even started for maybe hundreds of kids back at home, who might have been tormented by it. 

“Can’t believe it was such a fuckin’ coward,” Snafu said, later that day as they were told to settle in yet again. 

“I can. Thing like that can only be a coward,” Eugene scoffed. “Doesn’t matter now, anyway. The thing is dead, and now all we gotta worry about is…” 

“Stayin’ alive?” Snafu finished, a grim look on his face. 

“…yeah,” Eugene sighed. If only the rest of it was so easy. 

“Y’know…might need to check things out once we get home. If we get home,” Snafu said. “Just in case that fucker somehow gets out. Really shouldn’t do that alone.” 

“You’d come to Mobile and make sure I’d be safe from it there?” 

Snafu nodded. “But only if you come to New Orleans and help me check out my place.” 

“I could do that,” Eugene said. It sounded nice, to possibly spend time with Snafu outside of a foxhole, after they’d both had an actual shower. “It’s a date.” 

He froze as soon as he said it, feeling a blush heat up his face. But Snafu looked just the same, red as could be, staring at the ground like he was being paid to look at it. 

Eugene tried to distract himself from considering what a date with Snafu might entail, but failed miserably even as he tried to focus on keeping watch, for Japanese or a flash of clown hair and clothing. 

He was distracted enough from his watch to miss it-standing over near the hiding Japanese troops. 

A vision of Snafu, warped due to the thing’s wounds, with a bullet hole in its forehead.


End file.
